We discuss these opposing but complementary energies throughout our retreat process – yin (dark, feminine), and yang (light, masculine). Most Western civilization is drawn toward the light and away from the dark. This goes into our rejection of the feminine and glorification of masculine power. It plays itself out in the reproductive medical process, too.
Look at some of the damaging diagnostic terms that come directly out of womens' medical files:

Even if fertility challenges are due to male factor (commonly known in the medical records as the impotent title “male factor”), it is still the woman who goes through the procedural processes, and it is she who ends up with further diagnostic labels:
Poor responder;
Poor quality eggs (not poor quality sperm or embryos; poor quality EGGs);
IVF failure;
Habitual aborter

Women are conditioned to be pretty, nice, quiet, subservient, and not show powerful emotions like anger. Men, on the other hand, are conditioned to be strong, to fix things, and not show “weak” emotions like sadness and sorrow. As such, both men and women become stuck in impotent roles where they are not empowered to reach into the depths of their real power to access their true healing capacity.

Women are most powerful when they can access their deepest power; not their pretty, subdued exteriors, but their inner volatility. And men can be most powerful when they can reach into the potent underbelly of their rejected softness.

I happen to think that we spend way too much time running from the perceived darkness, in our quest to move closer to that which is yang, active, vibrant, and light.

In our movement toward that which feels pleasurable and good, we reject and miss that which feels uncomfortable, scary, and dark, but that is where our most potent healing occurs – physically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually. I don’t believe we were put into this dual existence to only pursue the light. By seeking pleasure and avoiding pain we miss the secret entrance into the unborn, the place prior to light and dark, male and female, where our true potency, virility, and fertility reside.

And while many of us pursue our latent tendencies in the opposite gender, every one of us has the full complement of yin and yang within. We don’t need the other; we already have all we need within. But we must access our inner potency alone. We must courageously walk down the path where two cannot walk abreast, right into the void, where we experience the exquisite loneliness that our roles and even our connections don’t allow us to experience.

Although others can help you to reach the edge, nobody can actually accompany you in the leaping off place. Only when we realize we are totally alone, can we reach the place where our inner potency emerges and we realize that we can never be alone because we are that which is beyond otherness, beyond two-ness. We are the one itself, showing up as separate, as two, as three, and as the ten thousand things.

Here we are unconditionally whole, where we live in the divine paradox of the unknown. Yin is as good as yang. Together they make up the Tao, where all is perfect. Nobody is more or less special than anyone else. Here in fact, nothing is sacred because there is nothing here that is not sacred.